Ainok Strike Leader
Creature — Dog Warrior
Whenever you attack with this creature and/or your commander, for each opponent, create a 1/1 red Goblin creature token that's tapped and attacking that player.
Sacrifice this creature: Creature tokens you control gain indestructible until end of turn.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander
- Price
- $2.81
- EDHREC rank
- #2481
Ainok Strike Leader turns every attacking creature into a counter-stacking threat, distributing +1/+1 counters across your board whenever it connects — and in the right shell, that snowballs fast. The cost is a four-mana 3/2 body that does nothing if it dies before it swings, which makes Zurgo Stormrender's haste-and-discard engine the ideal home rather than a generic go-wide deck.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Zurgo Stormrender
Zurgo Stormrender's ability to grant creatures haste on a discard trigger means Ainok Strike Leader can attack the turn it enters, immediately spreading counters before opponents can remove it. The 84% inclusion rate across nearly 18,000 decks is not a surprise — it's the engine Ainok Strike Leader was built for.
Neriv, Crackling Vanguard
Neriv, Crackling Vanguard cares about creatures with counters entering the battlefield and leaving, making every Ainok Strike Leader trigger a setup piece for Neriv's own payoffs. The two cards reinforce each other: Ainok spreads counters, Neriv turns those counters into additional value.
Syr Vondam, Sunstar Exemplar
Syr Vondam, Sunstar Exemplar rewards attacking with countered-up creatures, so Ainok Strike Leader's combat trigger directly fuels Vondam's damage amplification. Each swing both builds toward Vondam's threshold and grows the creatures that clear it.
Jetmir, Nexus of Revels
Jetmir, Nexus of Revels scales his combat bonuses off creature count, and Ainok Strike Leader fills out a wide board while making every attacker incrementally harder to chump. A token-dense Jetmir deck gets genuine mileage from the counter spread across a dozen bodies swinging at once.
Zurgo, Thunder's Decree
Zurgo, Thunder's Decree incentivizes running Warriors, and Ainok Strike Leader is a Warrior that rewards you for already doing what that deck wants — attacking in numbers. Every combat step Ainok connects is another layer of counters that makes Zurgo's Warrior payoffs hit harder.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Ainok Strike Leader is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but Commander is the only format where it's actually worth sleeving up. Legacy and Vintage have no interest in a four-mana 3/2 that requires combat steps to generate value — those formats end games before the counter-spread matters. In Commander, the multiplayer table and longer game lines are exactly what Ainok Strike Leader needs: multiple combat steps, wide boards, and commanders like Zurgo Stormrender or Jetmir, Nexus of Revels that turn incremental +1/+1 counter distribution into a closing engine. Oathbreaker is theoretically legal but follows a similar logic — the card rewards patience that 60-card formats don't grant.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$2.81 cheap tier
At $2.81, Ainok Strike Leader sits in budget-include territory — cheap enough to slot in without hesitation if it fits your strategy, but not so cheap that its price is purely noise. It holds that price because the Zurgo Stormrender spike drove real demand; if Warrior or counter-spread commanders fall out of rotation, don't expect it to climb.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Zurgo Stormrender
- Neriv, Crackling Vanguard
- Syr Vondam, Sunstar Exemplar
- Jetmir, Nexus of Revels
- Zurgo, Thunder's Decree
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.